The Beginning and the End: The Meaning of Life in a Cosmological Perspective

by Clement Vidal

Part I Overview of Worldviews.- The Six Dimensions of Philosophy.- Criteria for Worldview Comparison.- Religious, Scientific and Philosophical Worldviews.- Part II The Beginning of the Universe.- Origins of the Origin.- Capturing Free Parameters.- The Fine-Tuning Conjecture.- Part III Our Future in the Universe.- The Future of Scientific Simulations.- Cosmological Selections.- High Energy Astrobiology.- Cosmological Ethics and Immortality.- Appendix A Cosmic Evolutionary Worldview.- Appendix Argumentative Maps.

Genres: Philosophy, Science, Nonfiction

416 pages, Paperback

First published April 3, 2014

About the author

Dr. Clément Vidal is a philosopher with a background in logic and cognitive sciences. He is co-director of the 'Evo Devo Universe' community and founder of the 'High Energy Astrobiology' prize. To satisfy his intellectual curiosity when facing the big questions, he brings together many areas of knowledge such as cosmology, physics, astrobiology, complexity science, evolutionary theory and philosophy of science.

Reviews

[Sead Spuzic · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is clear enough that, thus far, the humanity was chasing the knowledge which was needed to ‘catch-up’ with the events and process the whirling world was throwing in our faces basically at random. We recognised the ”free parameters” in the Universe (called the universal constants, but also physical constants or fundamental physical constants) and the questions are posed such as “how come that these constants are so fine-tuned for life. What will happen if we choose wrong directions for our scientific explorations, if we fail to ask the right questions, and find ourselves lost in a cosmic whim we know nothing about?
The Author, Dr Vidal, has chosen the right questions and offered attractive hypotheses as the possible answers.

[Clement Vidal · Rating 5 out of 5]

As the author, I might be biased, but I hope you'll enjoy the new cosmological perspective offered!